Ecological violations of the natural environmental conditions caused by oil spillage at the places of its production, storage, transportations, processing, and utilization become still more and more widespread. According to the data of world literature, up to 10 mln tons of oil area annually discharged in seas and oceans the world over only due to wrecks of tankers. Such emergency oil discharges are causative of perishing the living organisms constituting the ecosystem, while restoration of its integrity involves initiation of the hydrocarbon destruction process. Thousands of hectares of fertile soils and pastures are brought out of agricultural use in the oil-producing regions, fishery ponds and pot water supply sources are polluted. Cleaning of tanker tanks after oil handling is also an important problem.
There are encountered a plurality of diverse groups of microorganisms feeding on petroleum hydrocarbons. However, cleaning capacities of said microorganisms as to time and degree of cleaning are quite unsatisfactory, especially in cases of intensive pollution of soil and water.
There are used currently a number of diverse methods and processes for cleaning oil pollutions, a special place among them being occupied by biological treatment methods. Such methods involve use of microorganisms, bacteria, yeast, and fungi.
Known in the present state of the art is the use of the naturally occurring strain of Pseudomanas putide-36 in a method for soil cleaning of oil pollutions (SU, A, 1,428,809). According to the method, purification is performed by introducing the biomass of the bacterial culture of said strain into oil pollution. The bacterial culture is introduced along with a mineral fertilizer, containing nitrogen in the nitrate form. The minimum concentration of the culture inserted is 10.sup.4 cells per mg per liter with the consumption rate of the aqueous mixture of from 0.5 to 1 l per sq. m.
The method enables soil to be purified of oil pollutions. However, the bacterial culture used is grown on a scarce feeding carbohydrate substrate, which is not an optimum one because the enzymes engaged in its oxidation are other than the oil destructing enzymes. This results in a reduced purification intensity due to adaptation of the culture to the new substrate. In addition, said strain of Pseudomonas putida-36 features hemolytic and gelatinase activity, which prevents the development of the self-cleaning process with the aid of microorganisms.
The degree of purification attainable by said method is but inadequately high. The method has a limited application being suitable only for soil purification. Moreover, use of the nitrate forms of nitrogen involved in this method results in additional contamination of the environment with toxic nitrate-ions.